The ambiguous nature of the terms hazard, risk and danger as they are used by the lay public, technologists and attorneys

Often, when we use terms in different situations, we change their meanings, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes deliberately and, in most cases, without significant impact. However, the transfer of terms from the lay world, where their meanings are understood with benign ambiguity, to the more demanding worlds of engineering and the courts of law can lead to needless misunderstandings and failures in communication. This can be especially true in the contentious milieu of a court setting where three distinct cultures converge: the attorneys and judges, in their solemn cloaks of magisterial splendour, the jurors, members of the laity whose everyday lives have been interrupted by a call to civic duty, and expert witnesses, whose professional expertise is needed to explicate (in the languages of the laity and the courts) the technical aspects of, say, how and why an industrial product failed, thus causing harm and injury, and how this failure can be related to the manner in which the product was designed, tested, manufactured and marketed. Here a discussion is given of the terms hazard, risk and danger, and their definitions and uses in each of the three cultures that converge in a trial setting.

Keywords:

• Hazard
• Risk
• Danger
• Product Liability Law
• Engineering
• Courts